When asked if he thought Kelly was the right man for the job, the News-Sentinel set Newman up on a tee to go off on a coach that he felt didn’t give him proper playing time. Instead, Newman took a difference approach:

“You have to go through (coaching at Notre Dame) and make your mistakes and then learn from them,” Newman said. “The reason that I say that coach Kelly is the right guy is that he is learning from those mistakes.”

…

“When coach Kelly first came in, I didn’t see how he wouldn’t be here until he is older,” Newman said. “As the years went by and things happened; like the whole debacle with the older guys and “his guys;” it all left a bad taste in our mouths. That was an interesting problem. He is learning in a sense of relationships with players, relationships with coaches, and how to coach the games.”

While he does give Kelly some praise, he does point out a legitimate problem that happened last season: the Weis guys/Kelly guys fiasco. He confirms that it didn’t set well with him or some of the older players, which is perfectly fine and the type of insider perspective that I hope to get from players.

The difference in this case is that Newman doesn’t attempt to place any additional spin to pass some other unrelated opinion off as fact (namely, Kelly had no faith in his players) or dredge up any private locker room conversations. It’s his opinion, no other players are named, and it isn’t an unfair criticism of Kelly in the least.

Newman continues by shedding some insight on the Navy debacle in 2010:

“Navy came with something that we hadn’t practiced at all,” Newman said. “We had to make checks to a completely new offense.”

Again, this is great. Irish fans wondered what in the hell happened in that game and now we know. Navy caught ND off-guard and the adjustments weren’t made quickly enough. Based on the result in 2011, it appears that Diaco was able to adjust properly and was well prepared for what Navy threw at them.

Sidenote: I am now freakin’ terrified that Navy is going to pull something crazy out in the first game of the 2012 season.

Finally, as a player that had to suffer through a coaching change, Newman had some good insight on coaching turnover at ND:

“With this (2012) schedule coming up, I can’t say that there won’t be coaching changes in the future, be it the head coach or assistants,” Newman said. “That is one of the main problems with Notre Dame. You see other programs that have continuity. There is a certain consistency, where a guy that played eight years ago and the guy that plays now, it’s the same coaching staff and they do the same things on the same days. That helps a program, it really does. You are going to have conversations about how many games Notre Dame will win or lose because of (always having) a new coaching staff. It really is a problem.”

I have a hard time disagreeing with Newman there; in fact, a few years ago, Newman’s exact logic was a reason that I wanted Weis to have another chance in 2009. Of course, that was until the season happened and there was no logic to defend him… Either way, it is rather refreshing to hear an inside opinion on a very real issue that Notre Dame has faced in the post-Lou era.

As I maintained in the comments of my last post on Newman, I got the impression that he wasn’t intentionally throwing former teammates or Kelly and staff under the bus, but his comments out of frustration allowed him to do so without even realizing it. It’s the main reason why that post has the title of “Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid” instead of something more harsh like “Please Shut the Hell Up and Never Speak Again.”

Speaking to the media is always a dangerous line to walk–everything can become a soundbite. While this lesson was undoubtedly taught to Newman during his time at ND, mastery of it is a whole other ball game. Based on the timing of these articles, I’m assuming Newman had a long sit down interview that is being drug out into several pieces, which could further tilt the odds of unfortunate comments seeing the light of day in highly unfavorable fashion.

I’m definitely encouraged by Newman’s quotes in this most recent piece and hope these comments are more indicative of what we see from him down the road.

Born and raised in the great state of Texas, Tex is a first-generation Domer and a former student manager. After graduation, he left the cold winters of South Bend behind and returned back to his home state with a computer engineering degree in tow. Missing the daily grind of working football practices and talking football with fellow Irish fans every day, he took to blogging, a path which eventually led him to Her Loyal Sons. Continuously diving into stats and game film, Tex strives to break down every aspect of Fighting Irish football--even though it's determined to kill him.

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About Ryan Ritter

Editor-in-ChiefTexan by birth, Irish by choice.

Born and raised in the great state of Texas, Tex is a first-generation Domer and a former student manager. After graduation, he left the cold winters of South Bend behind and returned back to his home state with a computer engineering degree in tow. Missing the daily grind of working football practices and talking football with fellow Irish fans every day, he took to blogging, a path which eventually led him to Her Loyal Sons. Continuously diving into stats and game film, Tex strives to break down every aspect of Fighting Irish football--even though it's determined to kill him.

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Good article. I can’t stop but think Newman is working on his communications resume as he continues to talk with Davis about BK and the ND days.

I probably would’ve yapped about the Irish baseball program in the days after my exit, but nobody wanted to hear my opinion. That said, any guy that rode the bench for four seasons after being a big blue-chip recruit looks like he’s got a major bone to pick.

While I’m sure the bit about hoping Navy doesn’t trot out anything new was just a joke, I wouldn’t worry too much about Diaco. I think the issues we had with Navy that first year had a lot less to do with something new, than just a learning curve for Diaco. He is still a very young defensive coordinator, and before that game he probably had never been up against a team running a true triple-option. I think he prepared his defense as best as he could to go up against what he thought he would see, and simply wasn’t prepared for some variations of the option (and who Navy would be reading). As a defensive coordinator, if you haven’t gone up against it, I just don’t think you can be fully prepared for it.

I think Diaco tried to apply his 3-4 scheme to a system it simply wasn’t fit for (the triple option was designed in the late 60s and early 70s specifically to attack 2-gap defensive systems like the 3-4). I think Diaco learned a great deal from that event. Last year, he just went ahead and changed up his entire defense to one designed solely to stop the triple option. Thats really what you have to do against a pure-triple option team. Holtz used to do the same thing. For the week of a game against a service academy, you just scrap your entire defense and make up a simple 8 man front defense designed solely to force the other team out of what they are good doing, because its not like they are going to beat you with a power running game or spread passing game.

Re: Navy. We have certainly seen some growing pains from all the coaches from facing new opponents and a different attitude from the opponent. Diaco against Navy, Kelly against Stanford the first time (Crist hadn’t practiced against a rush 3 drop 8 defense?) are two examples. I do think our coaching staff has learned they will get something thrown at them the opponent has been saving for Notre Dame and that they have to react quickly during the game for something they didn’t really prep for. That’s part of what makes coaching ND unique – nearly every week, you are the team or one of the teams circled on the other team’s schedule. I still worry about big or unique opponents or really good opposing coaches — a little bit about Navy, a lot more about Stanford and USC and whether our team will be able to adjust quickly enough. Kelly and his staff are getting much better at this, but the heartburn is still there for now.